bigwideland
Well-Known Member
My log on name is a play on my fav poem,
Walter Murdoch (18741970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
196. My Country
By Dorothea Mackellar
THE LOVE of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance, 5
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains, 10
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror 15
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon. 20
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country! 25
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again 30
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine, 35
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze. 40
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
Though earth holds many splendours, 45
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
Walter Murdoch (18741970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
196. My Country
By Dorothea Mackellar
THE LOVE of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins;
Strong love of grey-blue distance, 5
Brown streams and soft, dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains, 10
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror 15
The wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon. 20
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country! 25
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again 30
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine, 35
She pays us back threefold;
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze. 40
An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand
Though earth holds many splendours, 45
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.
